


Thirteen Nights

by wargoddess



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arranged Marriage, F/M, Porn With Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-01
Updated: 2007-04-01
Packaged: 2017-10-18 16:36:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/190957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wargoddess/pseuds/wargoddess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written after the finale of Season 2, and speculating several years forward.  The war is over, thanks be to the Avatar, but hatred takes longer to die.  The non-con warning is for an arranged marriage; I know not all AMs are non-consensual, but this one is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thirteen Nights

The war is over, thanks be to the Avatar, but hatred takes longer to die. The Fire Nation must make reparations. Nothing too onerous, or the world's economy could collapse; they are still powerful when all is said and done. But where the sons and daughters of fire cannot be made to pay in money or resources, their pride is fair game.

The Council of Elements issues decrees. Male citizens of the Fire Nation are required to shave their beards and sideburns, though they may retain their topknots if granted permission by the Council. Fire Nation warships become the property of the Water Tribe; they will be converted into fishing vessels. Fire Nation war criminals are publicly tried; the convicted are sent to Earth Kingdom mining camps. Fire Nation orphans are sent to the Avatar's newly-established Air Temple. There they will form the seed of a new nation, and give up their birth-heritage forever.

And the greatest humiliation of all: the Fire Lord must have a minder.

There is much debate in the Council as to who should have this duty. That the Fire Lord must be watched is not in question; too many Fire Lords in recent generations have been sociopaths. This raises speculation in the council as to whether this tendency of the royal lineage might be mitigated, somehow, by the infusion of greater self-discipline and a milder temperament. Very quickly it is decided that the minder must also be a wife.

Several prospects are vetted. In the end the choice boils down to politics and pragmatism. Water is the best counter for fire -- but there is only one female waterbender capable of matching the Fire Lord in combat. The Northern Water Tribe, which has never been happy about her existence, seizes upon this chance to down two birds with one boomerang. It is the ideal solution, they tell their weaker sister tribe to the south. She can be made a proper woman at last, and the Fire Lord may chafe less under a jailor who must submit to his will in all other matters.

The southerners object. The northerners insist. The southerners reluctantly acquiesce.

And to everyone's surprise, the Fire Lord agrees without protest.

#

The first day and night.

She arrives at noon under a gray, dismal sky, which may very well be intentional on her part. The somber mood is shared by her welcoming party, which in grim looks and petty gestures shows her precisely what the Fire Nation's people think of their lord's humiliation. She ignores their anger, because it is nothing beside her own.

The ceremony is quick and impersonal, so that neither party will have time to reconsider. A few short hours later, bride and groom stand facing each other in her bedroom. It is the first time they have met since a long-ago day when he betrayed everything she held dear. Their first conversation is mostly silent as they gaze at each other. She thinks a war's worth of thoughts.

Finally he steps forward. They both know their duty. Her hair is loose, draped over the thick collar of the traditional white sealfur dress she wears. He touches it, threads it through his fingers, cups her face between his hands. He leans forward to kiss her, but stops when she utters a mortal sigh.

"Let's get this over with," she says.

He freezes for all of a breath. She can see the anger in his face, and the hurt that underlies it. But while he is sworn to serve the Fire, she learns now that he is a master of cold as well.

"Fine," he says, letting go of her. "Get undressed."

She does so, not as perfunctorily as she might. It is a point of pride that Water Tribe women are considered the most beautiful in the world. Surreptitiously she watches his face as she peels open the white fur to reveal her dark, dark skin. But he does not react -- not emotionally, at least -- when she lets the fur slide down to her ankles. His face remains cold. She keeps her own face impassive as well, lest he detect her unease.

"On the bed," he says, and she makes to lie down. His voice is sharp in correction. "Facedown, please."

She has started this battle, but he is winning. She swallows and turns over. He takes hold of her hips, pulls her to the edge of the bed so that her legs dangle to the floor and her backside is presented to him in a most undignified manner. She hears the rustle of his clothing -- he is not undressing, just opening the front of his pants. His hand looks so big as it comes into her field of view, reaching over her head to remove a small flask from a compartment she didn't know was there. The flask clinks, the smell of jasmine oil wafts past her nose, and then in one long tearing, searing movement he slides into her. It is all she can do not to cry out or weep, but she succeeds in remaining impassive. Water is better than fire, at cold.

Blessedly, he does not take long. His breathing remains steady and controlled until the end, when it catches for just a moment. Like her, he makes no sound at any point. It troubles her, though, that he is so gentle after the initial pain. That is dangerous. He has always been a shrewd tactician. Perhaps he has already figured out what she is after.

She resolves to do better in the future.

#

The second day is a whirlwind of introductions and delicate pai-sho maneuverings of social and political status, as she meets the denizens of the palace. None of them are allies. Many are outright enemies. A few she has some small chance to win over, if she is careful and patient.

The second night is a repeat of the first. Again he uses oil to smooth his way; again he is quick, methodical, and silent. It still hurts because she has deliberately chosen not to heal herself. It hurts less because he is still incomprehensibly gentle. She tries to memorize the pain, realizing she will need that weapon in the future.

#

The third night he lets her stand before him naked for a full ten minutes before ordering her into position. His expression never changes, but he looks at her. Looks into her eyes, unblinking. Looks at her collarbones. Looks at her breasts. Looks at her belly. Looks at her thighs. Looks at her feet.

While he moves inside her, she tries to imagine pain and feels phantom hands on her skin instead.

#

The fourth night he strokes her back, very slowly, over and over again.

#

The fifth night she realizes a change of strategy is necessary. This time it was a little gesture, just a single stroke of his oiled thumb along her softest folds, it might have been accidental, and it did not did not did _not_ feel good. But it proves that he has begun his own attempt to flank her position. She seethes with fury after he leaves. Deceiver! Arrogant fool! She is a daughter of the oldest elemental masters. Her foremothers felt the moon in their blood and channelled it into water while his forefathers were still beating each other with campfire sticks. She will teach him the folly of underestimating her.

#

On the sixth day she draws an audience while practicing her waterbending forms in the palace courtyard. Her husband is not the only one who needs to be reminded of her power. It is the middle of the day, the time when she should be weakest, when she beckons a cloud down from the sky and uses a tendril of pond-water to twist it into a furious tornado. With a shift of her balance and a flick of her will she sends it dancing in a circuit around the Fire Lord's palace before dissipating it into a brief, fierce springtime rain.

There are fewer hostile glances directed at her when she is done. Those that remain are tinged with respect.

That night he comes to her as usual. But this time as she lets her dress fall, his coldness fails; there is a palpable heat in his eyes as he gazes at her. When he orders her to the bed, he tells her to lie on her back, and seems to savor the sight.

She allows herself to smile, as a personal reward.

#

The next morning she is awakened at dawn by a hollow roar. Looking out her window, she sees a dragon formed of fire streaming past. In the courtyard below, her husband weaves through a complicated series of fire-forms that are nonetheless and undeniably tinged with the same water techniques she used to make the tornado. The awe on the faces of the watching palace denizens tells her that this is a new technique. Her display of strength has helped to make him stronger as well.

From his finishing stance, he looks up and catches her watching him.

He does not come to her that night. Kings are often busy. She lies awake for a long while anyway, seething over the memory of his smile.

#

On the eighth day, his uncle comes to see how she's doing. They like each other; it is a pleasant conversation. They small-talk for awhile, and then he says,

"He isn't what you think. Not anymore."

She cannot help her anger.

"A betrayer is a betrayer, now and forevermore," she says.

"Have you never made a mistake? Have you never regretted it, and learned from it, and then worked hard to earn forgiveness?"

She flinches and falls silent, because of course she has.

She is angry after he leaves, and still angry when her husband comes to her later that night. Instead of rising to greet him as she usually does, she remains at her desk, pretending to be busy. "Must I endure this again?"

"Until you conceive, yes. I will not have the Fire Sages accuse me of a lack of diligence." He pauses. "Though we both know my efforts are futile if you've decided to be barren, healer."

She is surprised that he has realized this.

"Why would I do that?" she asks, to cover her unease. "If I hurry up and give you an heir, there will be no more need for us to do this."

The barb does not strike as deeply as she'd hoped; he smirks. "It is wise for a king to have more than one heir."

"Two, then."

His smirk softens into a true smile, and his voice becomes a caress. "Only two? But you will make such a fine mother."

The old man was right about one thing. There are more layers to him now, and they slip and spin with blows rather than simply cracking.

Flustered, and annoyed that she is flustered, she gets to her feet for a direct attack. "I'll need to be, won't I? To raise _your_ children." Oh, that is weak. She folds her arms, feigning nonchalance, and tries again. "I'll have to work hard to teach them honor, I suppose."

 _That_ works, far better than she'd intended. His eyes narrow, and the torches in the room flicker blue-white for an instant. There is tightly-controlled fury in his body as he steps closer. She braces herself and feels a kind of giddy, sickening vindication. Any damage he inflicts she can heal, but before she does she will be sure to show it to his uncle.

He reaches for her, and she jumps.

But he only unties the shoulder-laces of her dress. His touch, as usual, is unfailingly gentle, but she remains tense. He has tricked her before. He gets the shoulder-laces untied and moves his hands to the side-laces.

A surprise attack. This is dangerous. "Let me -- " she attempts.

"No."

The side-laces are undone, and the dress falls partially open. There is one more lace, on the inside of the dress. He undoes that too and pulls the dress open. She has stood before him naked several times now, striven to make herself the object of his desire. That is strength. Now, though, he touches her belly, just tracing the outline of her navel with one fingertip, and suddenly something is different. A shiver passes through her flesh, and it is, unfortunately, not the result of fear.

"On the bed," he says.

There is still anger in his eyes. She clings to that as she lies down on the bed. While he is angry, she still has a chance. She can win. She opens her mouth to goad him further and falls silent, startled, as she realizes that he is undressing. He has not done this on any of their previous nights; opening his pants was enough for duty. Now he lays aside the leather breastplate and epaulets, and tugs off the red silk shirt. Up close, his torso is carved by muscle and more scars than she expected to see. The light from the torches limns his silhouette.

She looks away. Oh, this is so dangerous.

The bed dips as he climbs onto it. She feels her legs pushed up and apart, and then she feels something she has never, ever felt before. Startled, she sits up on her elbows and looks down and sees that he has knelt between her legs in a very odd way. Is he trying to bite her? What she feels is anything but pain.

He circles her with his tongue, and her arms turn to water. She flops back on the pillows, unable to think, barely able to catch her breath. He probes with his tongue and she grabs two fistsful of the bedsheets, as hard as she can, because for a moment it feels as though she will fall off the bed. Onto the ceiling.

He suckles with a gentle, devastating rhythm. Pauses, as if savoring the taste of her. Suckles again.

She will not cry out. She _will not._

But she cannot help shuddering and arching and bucking her hips, and when the tsunami passes she sees that he is watching her, his amber eyes gleaming as they drink in her reactions, and she wants to weep because it is _not fair_ , she had no idea her body could turn on her like this, but then he has always been an expert in betrayal.

He moves up slowly, touching her here, tasting her there. Learning. He circles her navel again with his fingertips, doubtless having noticed how it affected her before. He slides his hands under her and traces her spine until she arches. He discovers that the gentlest tickle of her nipples can make her writhe. He nibbles at her throat while she trembles. He slides two fingers inside her and explores there as well, noting when she gasps or bites her lower lip or clenches her teeth.

She makes no sound throughout; this is the only salve to her pride. He has won this battle, but at least it was not a rout.

When he rises from the bed, putting his shirt back on, she cannot look at him. He hasn't even bothered to take his pants off. For all she knows, this was nothing more than a clinical exercise for him, like bending practice or sword forms. She is a new instrument he has learned to play. She could hate him for that alone.

She turns onto her side, her back to him, and prays that she will fall asleep quickly when he leaves. But he does not leave, standing behind her quietly for a long silent while.

"I'm sorry," he says. Somehow she knows he's not apologizing for what he's just done. Why should he? They both know she enjoyed it. No, this apology is for older sins of his, and the scars those sins have left on her heart.

She thinks to herself, not for the first time, that she could love him if not for those scars.

He leaves, and she sleeps.

#

On the ninth day he is gone, off on a diplomatic mission to Omashu. He will be gone three days. She spends the first day in intense waterbending practice, trying to erase the memory of the previous night from her mind. That night, though she has exhausted herself, she cannot sleep. Finally in the morning's small hours she puts her hands under the covers and touches herself with a slow and deliberate gentleness that does not, she tells herself repeatedly, feel anything like his touch. After that, she is able to sleep.

#

On the tenth day she goes to the Fire Garden, an incongruously-named cavern under the palace where rivulets of glimmering lava and steaming water run between beds of angular, elegant stone formations. The fire-hardened stone makes priceless and nearly unbreakable knife-blades and arrowheads. The natural edges are sharp enough to cut to the bone.

Something about this beautiful, hot, deadly place reminds her of her husband, and so she remains here for most of the day.

#

She spends the eleventh day bored mindless, as a group of generals' and sages' wives come to make her acquaintance and occupy her with hours of gossip. She would prefer to speak with the generals and sages themselves, but they are leery of her, very aware that she is the Council's eyes and ears in their land. So she endures the wives, smiling and trying to seem harmless so they will slip and say something they shouldn't.

They say nothing about politics, but they have plenty to say about her husband.

"Thought he would never take a wife," says one, a portly matron whose husband destroyed three Water Tribe villages during the war. "All those years wandering among foreigners -- no offense, my dear -- left him with so many strange notions." She shudders delicately and throws a conspiratorial look around. "I hear he made some noises about letting his bloodline die out."

The other women gasp. "Really?" "Impossible!" "How could he?" "Has he no sense of duty?"

The matron shrugs. "Can you blame him? His father murdered his mother, and gave him that scar. He killed his sister with his own hands, after _she_ killed their father. He told the Sages that the end of his lineage would be fitting repayment for all the blood they've spilled over the Hundred-Year War."

Another woman makes a sound of disgust. "It's unseemly for a Fire Lord to be so sentimental."

"Isn't it?"

Another woman leans forward. "Do you know, he refused all the women the Sages sent his way -- not just prospective wives, but comfort women too? Some were beginning to wonder -- " Abruptly she remembers that the Fire Lord's wife is present, and blushes. "Well. Nevermind that." She smiles, patronizing. "He chose _you_ , my dear, and that's all that matters."

Indeed, says the Fire Lord's wife. She gives the women a warm smile, and one by one imagines their icy deaths.

#

That night is a full moon. The movement of the tides pulls her out of bed and down to the hot springs plateau, where she undresses and dances as her foremothers danced, setting all the pools a-swirl in time with her rhythms. As the last droplets fall she turns and sees her husband on the plateau, watching her. He is still clad in his travel-armor, dusty from the road. He removes his helmet and she sees that he is tired; his burned eyelid droops more than usual. But the eye underneath is fixed on her.

He steps forward and sets his helmet down on a nearby bench. "Attend me," he commands.

So she goes to him, removing his armor and tugging off the sweat-drenched shirt underneath. She unlaces his boots and holds them while he steps out of them, and sets his double sword off to one side with respectful care. She almost balks at removing his pants, but his face is impassive above her. This makes it easier, a duty and nothing more, and soon he stands naked before her for the first time. It is another duty to carefully remove the Fire Crown from his hair and set that aside, then unbind his hair to wash. Yet another duty to scrub and rinse the grime off him when he kneels to be washed, then to scrub him an extra time to be sure he's clean.

It is not duty when he takes her hand and pulls her along as he wades into the largest of the springs. She goes with him because the water feels good, and certainly not because his hand feels good on her own, or because she is glad to see him.

He stops in the center of the pool and turns to her. "Tell me what you want," he says.

"What?"

He lets go her hand and steps back, spreading his arms out from his sides. She decides it is the moon that makes her body tighten in greedy, traitorous anticipation at the sight of him. He seems strangely uncontrolled, strangely vulnerable, nude with his hair loosed from its topknot to hang 'round his face. Then she realizes he _is_ vulnerable. He has stepped into a pool with a waterbender who has every reason to hate him, on a night when her power can easily overwhelm his.

"Take what you want of me," he says, and waits.

Killing him is not the first thing that comes to her mind.

Hurting him is second. She could freeze that pale skin until it turns blue, a fitting color for a waterbender's husband. She could drive lances of that ice into his flesh, until the pool fills with Fire Nation red.

She says, "I want you to stop pretending. I want you to be the heartless, honorless bastard I remember, instead of..." She gestures helplessly. " _This_."

"I can't do that. I was never heartless or honorless."

"You made me trust you. You made me _like_ you. And then you turned on me, and nearly destroyed everything I loved!"

He does not bow his head, but her power is at its most sensitive. She can feel his shame. "I was a stupid boy who didn't know what was important. But I'm not that boy any longer."

The water around them begins to turn cold. Heated water still gushes through cracks near their feet, but the rest is unpleasantly tepid, growing cooler by the minute. "I don't believe you've changed. I _can't_ believe it. How can I ever trust you, after what you did?"

"You can't."

The water around them goes very still. Even the bubbles from the spring stop breaking the surface.

He sighs. "What do you want me to say? I don't even trust myself sometimes. The Council of Elements was right to send you here. The blood of madmen and murderers runs in my veins, and sometimes... sometimes I think that I..." He lowers his eyes. "That was why it had to be you. You're strong. You know what I'm capable of. It's better if you don't trust me, because then you can keep me in check."

There is the sudden smell of bitter metal in the air, and he begins to shiver as a skein of ice coats the pool's surface. She does not shiver. Water Tribe women are made of stronger stuff. "So that's it. You don't want a wife, you want a conscience."

He struggles not to show how cold he is, though his teeth have begun to chatter. But he meets her angry gaze steadily, intently. "N-no. Th-that isn't... all I w-want."

Unbidden, in spite of herself, she remembers that first night. The way he touched her hair. The look on his face while he did it.

The water around them warms, just a little. Just enough that the icy surface melts, though the water is still unpleasantly chilly. She turns and walks to the stone steps, climbing out of the pool and drying herself, then putting on a robe. When she turns her husband is still in the pool, watching her, a wary frown on his face. He has not, for reasons known only to him, bothered to warm the water.

She holds up a second towel, for him, and waits.

He gets out. She dries him, and helps him don his robe. He kneels to allow her to re-tie his topknot, though he carries the Fire Crown in his hand. When she continues to stand there, awaiting his command, he takes her hand and leads her back into the palace. In the royal family's wing his room is closer, so he pulls her inside with him. She looks around, unsurprised at the starkly martial decor. Only a flame tapestry above his bed marks the room as his; the only other personal effects in sight are weapons.

But the bed is larger than that of an ordinary soldier, so there is plenty of room for her to lie down when he gestures her toward it. No commands this time. As soon as she settles, he climbs in and wraps his arms around her from behind, moulding his body against her own. He is still cold, and he was already weary from traveling. By the time she gets the blankets into place around them, he is already asleep.

Sighing, she falls silent, and thinks on many things for the rest of the night.

#

She is catnapping when he abruptly stirs and rolls away from her, onto his back. She dredges herself out of sleep and turns to see that he is wide awake, his eyes fixing on the nearby window, through which they can see a faint lightening of the sky. Dawn is coming, and his firebender's blood stirs in instinctive response.

The tension in his body intrigues her. She reaches over and runs her fingertips along one of the cords of his neck. He flinches at once, turning to frown at her -- but the frown does not quite mask the flare of interest that was his true first reaction. She strokes his lips, and the frown melts away; his eyes drift half shut. She strokes his chest, and it heaves under her hand as his breath quickens.

How interesting.

She lets her hand drift further down, splaying over the ridges of his belly and grazing the planes of his lower abdomen.

He catches her wrist tightly enough to hurt before, recalling himself, he loosens his grip. "What are you doing?"

"I want you."

He closes his eyes and swallows. Perhaps he has been waiting for her to say those words. "It's never wise to start a campfire in a dry meadow."

How _extremely_ interesting. "But I'm cold," she says. Her voice is low, a purr. He shivers as if she has caressed him. "A fire should warm me nicely." She pulls her wrist free of his hand and touches him. He is so hard that an earthbender could make a tool of his flesh. She strokes him experimentally and his whole body stiffens, his eyes opening wide and wild and hungry.

He murmurs, his voice tight with strain, "I might hurt you."

Yes. That is exactly what she wants. Now she will see the real him.

She throws back the covers so that he lies before her, a visual feast. He does not move, his body rigid with the effort of controlling himself. What is he holding back? Violence? Some perversion? She is determined to find out, even if it leaves her bleeding and bruised.

She scouts the ridges of his collarbones and the rolling hills of his arms with her hands. His erection beckons, but she ignores that for the time being. His hands, fisted on the bedsheets, fascinate her more. Those are his anchors, his weak points. The tendons of his forearms stand out in sharp define under his skin; they quiver when she strokes his arms. His legs are long and lean and graceful. He holds them stiff, perhaps fighting the urge to roll over and pin her beneath him and unleash all the fire in his soul.

She shivers in anticipation and moves to straddle him.

He is breathing harder already, his eyes fixed on her face. She traces his nipples with her fingertips and he makes a soft low sound, so full of need that she wonders if he will last more than a minute once he's inside her.

Only one way to find out. She lifts him, searches for the right angle, and pushes down. He gasps and arches in the same moment, inadvertently helping her. It hurts, because she is not quite ready and has used no oil. But that is just as well. Pain will keep her focused on her goal.

And just as she plans, he groans and sits up, his control breaking. The look of hunger on his face is such that when he goes for her throat, she wonders if she will be able to heal herself. But his teeth merely graze her skin, his tongue snaking out to trace the thread of her pulse. It tickles, it burns. She exhales a weak laugh. His hands unlock their deathgrip on the sheets and attach themselves to her instead. He pulls her tight against him and then holds her there, not allowing her to move.

"What -- ?" she begins.

"Shut up," he snarls, and licks along her jaw. She smiles, feeling more assured than ever of her victory as he pushes her further back still, shifting to lay her on the bed beneath him. He never once breaks their connection, but now it is easier for him to keep her still. She submits without struggle, waiting to see what he will do when he realizes she is his to do with as he pleases.

The air in the room is hot and dry on her skin as he slides one of his hands up to cup one breast. Through the window, a bright white nimbus tints the horizon, presaging the coming sun. His grip is firm, almost painful -- but with his thumb he strokes her nipple in a slow, winding circle. The touch is so delicate that perhaps it is only the static that touches her, and not his thumb. Yes, static, because the sensation that flickers through her in response is electric. Her whole body thrums with it.

She gasps before she can think to hold the sound back, her smugness slipping before unease. He is trembling with desire for her, literally mad with it; the look in his eyes would be frightening if she hadn't deliberately courted it. She expected him to take her hard and fast, to bite her, to hit her. He should have shown her his true, brutal nature by now. Why hasn't he?

She cannot muster the wit to speculate. Contorting his body with a master bender's flexibility, he moves his mouth to her other nipple, mimicking that circling thumb with his tongue. She cannot help clutching at his head in response to that, trying and failing to hold back another gasp. When he shifts again, she realizes abruptly what he was up to. She is soft and slick and ready for him now -- so ready that it feels exquisite when he pulls back and thrusts experimentally, testing her waters. She does not want to enjoy the sensation; this was not part of her plan. But she does.

He sits up and braces himself above her, a young god of fire and lust. And then he fucks her. Sometimes the most vulgar words for things are the only words that suit. He fucks her just as hard and fast as she had expected, so hard that her whole body is jarred with each thrust, so fast that his breath is a harsh angry pant and above her all she can see is his greedy eyes and the gleam of his teeth as he clenches them or grins or somehow does both at the same time. The sun is a blazing sliver on the horizon, the same color as his eyes, she will see both in her dreams for many nights to come, if she survives this and does not just spontaneously combust as she now fears she might.

If only it hurt. If only she did not want more.

She gives her first ground to him when he suddenly withdraws from her; she cries out in protest. The sound of her own voice echoes back at her from the walls and horrifies her; is that really _her_ , sounding so helpless and desperate? He laughs at her discomfiture -- something else that will haunt her dreams -- and throws her over on her belly. "You asked for this," he breathes into her ear. His chest is a furnace against her back; his hands are pulling her hips up, shoving a balled-up pillow underneath. He slips a hand under her as well, between her thighs. "Remember that."

She wonders what he means as he enters her again. She expects the same firestorm as before, but this time he is slow and deliberate. Intent. Then she realizes the trap. Between her legs his fingers work in time with his thrusts, employing all the tricks he learned the last time: gentle squeezes, a delicate stroke, soft circular massage.

Oh, no. She grips the sheets, her heart pounding. No, damn him, this was not what she intended at all. He was supposed to _hurt_ her. He was supposed to take his pleasure with no regard for her comfort or health. He was supposed to give her a reason to hate him.

Instead he brings her to pleasure again and again and again. She cannot stop herself from crying out after the first time, which makes her teeth ring and her vision go white and her toes curl and her hair tingle. After the second time he whispers encouragement in her ear and it is his name that she cries next, over and over until her voice is ragged. After the third time he is shaking all over, he is whimpering in her ear, he is rubbing his face against her shoulder and groaning, he is completely gone. As the last of the sun's disc finally clears the horizon he rears back, hauling her hips up and slamming into her so hard that the world blurs. She hears his hoarse, hollow scream, but cannot count it a victory. She has already screamed just as loud.

#

They sleep. Servants knock at his door and he rouses enough to curse them and command them to disturb him again on pain of death. She heartily agrees with this, though she would never say so.

Night falls. The moon rises, not quite full. This time he remains passive while she rides him. The reverence of his gaze feels like starlight on her skin, a thousand tiny burning suns. When they are done she leans down and gives him what she would not on that first night so long ago: a kiss. He strokes her hair and cups her face and gazes at her like she is the only woman in the world.

That was the twelfth night.

#

On the thirteenth day, she has tea with her husband's uncle. She tells him that perhaps she was too quick to judge in some matters; patience and circumstance will be her guides from now on. He nods sagely, sips tea, and wishes her a fine, healthy baby. She wonders how he knew, and contemplates feminine variations on his name.

On the thirteenth night, she heals her husband's face.

#

After that, she never counts the nights again.


End file.
